Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

NOTEBOOK “ι”

DIE NEUE ZEIT, 1911 (ON WAR N.B.) AND 1912(INTER ALIA, ON A UNITED STATES OF EUROPE)

Die Neue Zeit, 30th year (1912)

[N.B. Alsoan article on the history of private fortunes in America.]

30th year, 1 (October 1911-1912)

articles by Varga (p. 660), Hilferding (p. 773) and Kautsky (p. 837 et seq.) on gold, commodities, money.

30th year, 2 (1912)

an article byPannekoek(“Mass Action and Revolution”) (p. 541 et seq.)  and one byKautsky, “New Tactics” (August 2, 1912 et seq.) withvilepassages about ministries, etc. (a vile opportunist article).  [N.B. prior to Basle.]  Radek, “Concerning Our Struggle Against Imperialism” (p. 233).

[Also a polemic between Lensch and Kautsky ondisarmament.N.B.

[Also articles byEcksteinagainst Pannekoek

[Pannekoek’s article: “The Nature of Our Present-Day Demands”, p. 810.

Deals specially with the “feasibility” of the demands.

Die Neue Zeit, 1911, 2 (29th year).

pp.248and276. Minor “polemic” between Karl Kautsky andLeipziger Volkszeitung(Rosa Luxemburg) over a United States of Europe—remarks which donottouch on the essence of the matter, but are indicative of the polemic that isbeing conductedinLeipziger Volkszeitung.

Leipziger Volkszeitungattacked also Ledebour for his statement:

“We put ... to capitalist society ... the demand ...  that they [the statesmen] prepare to unite Europe in a United States of Europe in the interests of Europe’s capitalist development, in order that later on Europe shall not be completely ruined in world competition” (p. 276).

This, it says, is the same argument Calwer used in urging a customs union against America.

Kautsky retorts: no, it isnotthe same. In Ledebour’s statement there isnota word about a customs struggle,onlyabout a United States of Europe, “an idea which ...  is not necessarily spearheaded against the U.S.A.” (277). ((Consequently, an idea of peaceful competition!))

Karl Kautsky, p. 248, says that both Parvus and Johann Philipp Becker are (or were) in favour of a United States of Europe.

Ibidem, pp. 943-44 (September 29, 1911), report of an article byH. Quelch(inThe Social-Democrat, 1911, August), who says that the capitalists, too, favour peace (capital, he says, isalreadyinternational): capital can already create a “United States of theWorld” (N.B.: sic! “of the world”), but this world-wide trust would oppress the workers still more. “Capitalist world peace... the all-powerful international police, nowhere any right of political asylum... peace and tranquillity would prevail in this slave state”... (p. 944).

From the war Quelch (contrary toKarl Kautsky) expectsnotrevolution, but economic prosperity, deliverance from the “pressure of production”.

Die Neue Zeit, 1911, 2 (29th year, 2nd volume), No. 30, April 28, 1911 (pp. 97-107).

Karl Kautsky, “War and Peace”.

Karl Kautsky pronounces in favour of peace propaganda andforUnited States of Europe (§ 3 of the article isin fact headed: “A United States of Europe”).

Karl Kautsky is against the proposal to decide beforehand toreplyto war by a strike (here there is a passage he quoted in 1915, that the people (“the population”), the“crowd”, would itself kill opponents of the war if it considered the frontiers in danger, if it fearedinvasion—p. 104, etc., etc.).

But, in quotingsuchpassages from this 1911 article,Kautskyin 1915 didnotquote the following passages:

1) In § 1:“Dynastic War and People’s War.”N.B. ((My emphasis.))

...“In the eighteenth century the princes regarded the states merely as their domains....

...“Whether the revolution arises from the competition in armaments or from war—it will in any case be aninternational phenomenon” (p. 106)....

...“Even if the revolution does not arise from reaction against the burden of armaments or against the horrors of war, but from other causes, and if at the outset it is not international, but restricted to a single state,it cannot remain so for longunder present conditions. It [the revolution]is boundto spread to other states”... (107).  And from this Karl Kautsky deduces the United States of Europe “and its eventual expansion into the United States of the civilised world”.

“Nevertheless [despite all the difficulties of realising the United States of Europe] the effort to peacefully unite the European states in a federative community is by no means hopeless.  Its prospects are bound up with those of therevolution” (K. Kautsky’s italics, p. 106).

Die Neue Zeit, 1911, 2, p. 96: an account ofOtto Bauer’s article in the symposiumDer Kampf(1911, No. 3): “World war is its [capitalism’s] last word....  If the Turkish revolution leads to a European war, the inevitable result will be a European revolution.”

Die Neue Zeit, 1911, 2, p. 179.

An article byRothsteinon the congress in Coventry (1911), where the British Socialist Party adopted aresolutionin favourof “the maintenance of an adequate fleet for national defence”.

against Hyndman’s propaganda

Die Neue Zeit, 1911, 1, article byAskewon British colonial policy inEgypt.